Updated 10:00am PST to revise Google percentage through online bookstores.
Watch out Amazon. Google is hitting the online bookstore business.
The search giant announced Thursday at the Frankfurt Book Fair that in the first half of next year it will launch Google Editions, a new service that will deliver e-books to anyone with a Web browser.
Partnering with publishers which whom it already has digital rights deals, Google plans to initially offer about a half-million books through the service, according to press reports from Frankfurt. Readers will be able to purchase the books directly from Google or from online bookstores such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
In September, in conjunction with Congressional hearings into its Google Books project, the search titan had revealed a reseller program that would give competitors a share of money from such a service.
Google plans to share the sales with both publishers and the online bookstores. For books sold directly from its Web site, the search giant said at the book fair that it would give publishers 63 percent of the sales and keep 37 percent itself. For books sold through Amazon or other retailers, the publisher would get 45 percent, while the retailer would get almost 55 percent with a small share for Google.
The company said that consumers would be able to read the books on any connected device, including PCs, Netbooks, and smartphones. Apple iPhone users could access the e-books through their Gmail accounts.
Google said it doesn't plan to offer a dedicated e-book reader to accompany the new service, according to the press reports.
"We're not focused on a dedicated e-reader or device of any kind," Tom Turvey, Google's director of strategic partnerships, told journalists at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
Google was not immediately available for comment to CNET News.
Updated at 8:20 a.m. PST with comment from Barnes & Noble.
Barnes & Noble has acquired e-book seller Fictionwise.com for $15.7 million, as it makes another attempt at running an e-book store.
The cash deal, announced Thursday, is part of Barnes & Noble's plans to launch its own e-book store later this year, despite its lack of success with a previous attempt years ago.
Back in 2000, Barnes & Noble teamed up with Microsoft to launch an e-book store with the help of Microsoft Reader software. But three years after its launch and investing at least $20 million into the project, Barnes & Noble discontinued sales of e-books.
Although the company did not disclose the reasons for halting its e-book store efforts, a Nielsen/NetRatings analyst speculated at the time that sales had been minimal.
Barnes & Noble spokeswoman Mary Ellen Keating said Friday that the time wasn't right earlier this decade.
"Consumers were not as quick to embrace the technology, the pricing set by the publishers, or the reading devices," Keating said of the previous effort. "We did have growth in our e-book sales, but the growth was not significant enough to support the business at the time."
Apparently, however, consumer tastes and the technology have advanced enough over the past six years to give it another shot.
"The market has changed since then, and we see this as a growth area," Keating said.
Last month, archrival Amazon.com . And earlier this week, Amazon unveiled its Kindle app for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Fictionwise, which Barnes & Noble will run as a separate business unit, offers its own eReader app for smartphones, other handheld devices, desktop computers, and laptops. Likewise, competitor Lexcycle has its Stanza app for e-book reading.
While consumer interest in e-books has increased over the years, they have yet to attract a mainstream market. Analysts attribute price as the major barrier to the adoption of e-books.
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